Task-oriented machine learning and a configurable tool thereof on a computing environment

ABSTRACT

A task-based learning using task-directed prediction network can be provided. Training data can be received. Contextual information associated with a task-based criterion can be received. A machine learning model can be trained using the training data. A loss function computed during training of the machine learning model integrates the task-based criterion, and minimizing the loss function during training iterations includes minimizing the task-based criterion.

STATEMENT REGARDING PRIOR DISCLOSURES BY THE INVENTOR OR A JOINTINVENTOR

The following disclosure(s) are submitted under 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(1)(A):DISCLOSURE(S): “Task-Based Learning,” Chen, D., et al.,https://www.cs.cornell.edu/gomes/pdf/2019_chen_arxiv_topnet.pdf, Dec.11, 2019.

BACKGROUND

The present application relates generally to computers and computerapplications, and more particularly to machine learning, trainingmachine learning models such as neural network models, and aconfigurable tool utilizing method of operation thereof on a computingenvironment such as a cloud-based computing environment.

Machine learning techniques have been widely used in various areas. Thespecific tasks in various domains often have their customizedperformance metrics. For instance, portfolio management tools mayinclude forecasting of key finance indicators, such as the quarterlyrevenue of public companies. In forecasting public company's quarterlyrevenue or earnings, the customized metrics may include both thedirectional errors, absolute errors and their combinations compared witha set of benchmarks. For inventory management tools, which performdemand forecasting, the customized metrics that directly relates to costmay include directional accuracy (over/under forecast), absolute errors(miss sale amount/overstock amount) and their combinations. Powergeneration planning tools, which may perform load forecasting also has asimilar complicated customized metrics.

Classical machine learning methods use differentiable performancemetrics such as mean absolute error (MAE), mean square error (MSE), androot mean square error (RMSE). However, these common losses are notnecessarily aligned with customized metrics. In addition, customizedmetrics are not necessarily differentiable, and may present challengesfor applying machine learning or deep learning models.

BRIEF SUMMARY

Task-oriented machine learning and a configurable tool thereof can beprovided on a computing environment such as cloud-based computingenvironment. A computer-implemented method, in one aspect, can includereceiving training data. The method can also include receivingcontextual information associated with a task-based criterion. Themethod can further include training a machine learning model such as aneural network using the training data, wherein a loss function computedduring the training integrates the task-based criterion, and whereinminimizing the loss function during training iterations includesminimizing the task-based criterion.

In another aspect, the method can include providing a tool for buildingand managing the machine leaning model on a computing environment, thecomputing environment allowing an on-demand network access to a sharedpool of configurable computing resources, the configurable computingresources including at least one of networks, network bandwidth,servers, processing, memory, storage, applications, virtual machines,and services.

A system, in one aspect, can include a hardware processor and a memorydevice coupled with the hardware processor. The hardware processor canbe configured to receive training data. The hardware processor canfurther be configured to receive contextual information associated witha task-based criterion. The hardware processor can further be configuredto train a machine learning model using the training data, wherein aloss function computed during training of the machine learning modelintegrates the task-based criterion, and wherein minimizing the lossfunction during training iterations includes minimizing the task-basedcriterion.

In another aspect, the hardware processor can be provided on a computingenvironment allowing an on-demand network access to a shared pool ofconfigurable computing resources. The configurable computing resourcescan include at least one of networks, network bandwidth, servers,processing, memory, storage, applications, virtual machines, andservices.

A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructionsexecutable by a machine to perform one or more methods described hereinalso may be provided.

Further features as well as the structure and operation of variousembodiments are described in detail below with reference to theaccompanying drawings. In the drawings, like reference numbers indicateidentical or functionally similar elements.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an overview of a Task-OrientedPrediction Network in an embodiment.

FIG. 2 is illustrates an overview of the Task-Oriented PredictionNetwork in another embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an overview of task oriented learningframework deployed on a cloud-based environment in an embodiment.

FIG. 4 is another diagram illustrating a system architecture in anembodiment.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram illustrating a method in an embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing components of a system in one embodimentthat provides a task-based learning and task-directed predictionnetwork.

FIG. 7 illustrates a schematic of an example computer or processingsystem that may implement a task-based learning system in an embodiment.

FIG. 8 illustrates a cloud computing environment in one embodiment.

FIG. 9 illustrates a set of functional abstraction layers provided bycloud computing environment in one embodiment of the present disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Systems, methods and techniques for a metric-oriented learning machineare disclosed. A metric-oriented learning machine, in embodiments, canautomatically approximate given customized metrics, for example, viareinforcement learning to boost performance over a common loss.

In an aspect, a general learning framework or method is provided thatintegrates customized performance metrics into a learning process, forexample, via a task-oriented estimator, and learns a machine learningmodel that directly optimizes the ultimate task-based goal or target.The performance metrics, which are customized, need not be aligned withstandard learning metrics and need not be differentiable. In an aspect,such a learning framework can be integrated within a cloud-based systemto deploy the learning framework in various services. An examplecloud-based system is further described below with reference to FIGS. 3and 4 . An example of a service can include, but is not limited to, afinancial service for optimizing investment decisions, financialforecasting, and performing analysis such as a loan approval tools basedon credit risk analysis and modeling, and inventory management tool,power generation planning tools and/or others.

In an aspect, the disclosed system and/or method can meld the gapbetween upstream model learning and downstream application scenario byintegrating performance metrics into a learning process. The disclosedsystem and/or method may also incorporate an approximation ofnon-differentiable customized performance metrics via a differentiablevalue function in the learning process, and optimize the machinelearning model, e.g., a predictor, based on the value function. Thedisclosed system and/or method may further hybridize a heuristic lossfunction within the learning process, which can ensure a stable learningprocess.

In an aspect, the disclosed system and/or method may use adifferentiable heuristic metric and a reward estimator network toapproximate a non-differentiable customized reward metrics, and optimizea predictor toward the approximated reward. In an aspect, the disclosedsystem and/or method may include batchwise attention to betterapproximate metrics that captures overall prediction performance (e.g.,ranking, relative direction). In an aspect, a disclosed learning schememay include a capability of automatically integrating non-differentiableevaluation criteria, which for example, can be suitable for diversifiedand customized task-based evaluation criteria in real-world predictiontasks.

Real-world applications often involve domain-specific and task-basedperformance objectives that are not captured by the standard machinelearning losses, but may be needed decision making. A challenge fordirect integration of more meaningful domain and task-based evaluationcriteria into an end-to-end gradient-based training process, forexample, in machine learning such as a neural network, is the fact thatoften such performance objectives are not necessarily differentiable andmay even require additional decision-making optimization processing. Inembodiments, a Task-Oriented Prediction Network (TOPNet) is disclosed,which is an end-to-end learning scheme that automatically integratestask-based evaluation criteria into the learning process via a learnablesurrogate loss function, which directly guides the model towards thetask-based goal. A benefit of the TOPNet learning scheme lies in itscapability of automatically integrating non-differentiable evaluationcriteria, which makes it suitable for diversified and customizedtask-based evaluation criteria in real-world tasks. Applications ofTOPNet can include, but not limited to, real-world financial predictiontasks such as revenue surprise forecasting and credit risk modeling.Experimental results demonstrate that TOPNet significantly outperformsboth traditional modeling with standard losses and modeling withhand-crafted heuristic differentiable surrogate losses.

Prediction models have been used to facilitate decision making acrossdomains, e.g., retail demand prediction for inventory control, userbehavior prediction for display advertisement, and financial marketmovement prediction for portfolio management, to name a few. Thesemodels are often trained using standard machine learning loss functions,such as mean square error (MSE), mean absolute error (MAE) andcross-entropy loss (CE). However, these criteria commonly used to trainprediction models can be different from the task-based criteria used toevaluate model performance. For instance, a standalone imageclassification model is often trained by optimizing cross-entropy loss.However, when it is used to guide autonomous driving, one may care moreabout misclassifying a traffic sign than misclassifying a garbage can.In revenue surprise forecasting, financial institutes often train aregression model to predict the revenue surprise for each public companyminimizing mean square error. However, they evaluate the modelperformance based on the “Directional Accuracy” (percentage ofpredictions that are more directional accurate) and the “MagnitudeAccuracy” (percentage of predictions that are 50% more accurate) withrespect to industry benchmarks (e.g., the consensus of professionalanalysts), which provide more value for downstream portfolio management.In loan default risk modeling, banks often train a classification modelto predict the default probability of each loan application, andoptimize the probability threshold to accept or reject loans with low orhigh risk. Eventually, they evaluate the model performance byaggregating the total profit made from those loans.

Models trained with standard machine learning losses are not necessarilyaligned with the task-based evaluation criteria and as a result mayperform less than optimally with respect to the ultimate task-basedobjective. A solution to this problem is to directly use the task-basedevaluation criteria as the loss function. However, task-based evaluationcriteria can present difficulty to an end-to-end gradient-based trainingprocess due to the fact that often such performance objectives are notnecessarily differentiable and may even require additionaldecision-making optimization processing. Existing works in this areamainly focus on deriving heuristic surrogate loss functions thatdifferentiate from downstream evaluation criteria to the upstreamprediction model via certain relaxations or Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT)conditions. Those derivations are mainly hand-crafted and task-specific,and as a result, may require an amount of effort to find propersurrogate losses for new tasks, especially when the evaluation criteriaare complicated or involve non-convex optimization. Hand-craftedsurrogate losses also can be difficult to optimize, and may present lessthan an optimal choice. The disclosed system and/or method, inembodiments, provide a general end-to-end learning scheme, which canautomatically integrate the task-based evaluation criteria.

The disclosed Task-Oriented Prediction Network (TOPNet) can be a genericend-to-end learning scheme that automatically integrates task-basedevaluation criteria into the learning process via a learnabledifferentiable surrogate loss function, which approximates the truetask-based loss and directly guides the prediction model to thetask-based goal. In an embodiment, TOPNet learns a differentiablesurrogate loss function parameterized by a task-oriented loss estimatornetwork that approximates the true task-based loss given the prediction,the ground-truth label and necessary contextual information. TOPNetoptimizes a predictor using the learned surrogate loss function, toapproximately optimize its performance with respect to (w.r.t.) the truetask-based loss. By way of example, the performance of TOPNet isdemonstrated on two real-world financial prediction tasks (e.g., arevenue surprise forecasting task and a credit risk modeling task, wherethe former is a regression task and the latter is a classificationtask). Applying TOPNet to these two tasks showed that TOPNetsignificantly boosts the ultimate task-based goal by integrating thetask-based evaluation criteria, outperforming both traditional modelingwith standard losses and modeling with heuristic differentiable(relaxed) surrogate losses. TOPNet can be applied to other practicaltasks such as in industrial processing.

In an embodiment, Task-Oriented Prediction Network (TOPNet) need notrequire hand-crafted differentiation of the downstream evaluationcriteria. In an embodiment, TOPNet learns a differentiable surrogateloss via a task-oriented loss estimator network, which automaticallyapproximates the true task-based loss and directly guides the upstreampredictor towards the downstream task-based goal. In the context oftask-based learning, for example, TOPNet automatically integrates thetrue task-based evaluation criteria into an end-to-end learning processvia a learnable surrogate loss function.

In an embodiment, the following formally defines the task-basedprediction problem that can be addressed. The system and/or method mayuse x∈X⊆

^(d) and y∈

for the feature and label variables. Given dataset D={(x₁,y₁), (x₂,y₂) .. . , (x_(n),y_(n))}, which is sampled from an unknown data distributionP with density function p(x,y), a prediction task can be formulated aslearning a conditional distribution q_(θ)(ŷ|x) that minimizes theexpected task-based loss (task-based criteria)

^(T)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c), i.e.,

$\begin{matrix}{{\min\limits_{\theta}{{\mathbb{E}}_{x\text{:}{p{(x)}}}\left\lbrack {\ell^{T}\left( {{{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)}{p\left( {y❘x} \right)}},c} \right)} \right\rbrack}},} & (1)\end{matrix}$where c denotes some necessary contextual information related totask-based criteria, p(x) denotes the marginal distribution of x, and θdenotes the parameters of the prediction model. As implied informulation (1), the system and/or method considers the tasks whosetask-based losses can be computed point-wisely.

A challenge of task-based learning comes from the fact that the truetask-based loss function

^(T)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c) is often non-differentiable and may eveninvolve additional decision-making optimization processing, which isdifficult to use directly in gradient-based learning methods. Forinstance, in revenue surprise forecasting, the task-based criteriaevaluate a prediction ŷ based on both the true revenue surprise y andthe prediction of the consensus of the professional analysts c (in thatcase, both q_(θ)(ŷ|x) and p(y|x) are Dirac delta distribution).Specifically, the criteria compute whether the prediction is moredirectional accurate and whether the prediction is significantly (50%)more accurate compared with the consensus, which both involvenon-differentiable functions. Likewise, in credit risk modeling, thetask-based criteria involve optimizing a probability decision thresholdp_(D) to maximize the profit after approving all loan applications witha predicted default probability p_(i) lower than p_(D).

A solution to this challenge is to use a surrogate loss function

^(S)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c) to replace the true task-based loss and guidethe learning process. For example, a solution can be using standardmachine learning loss functions, such as mean square error (MSE), meanabsolute error (MAE) and cross-entropy loss (CE), or other task-specificdifferentiable loss functions as the surrogate loss, that is,

$\begin{matrix}{\min\limits_{\theta}{{{\mathbb{E}}_{x\text{:}{p{(x)}}}\left\lbrack {\ell^{S}\left( {{{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)}{p\left( {y❘x} \right)}},c} \right)} \right\rbrack}.}} & (2)\end{matrix}$

For instance, both standard machine learning losses and task-specificdifferentiable losses can be selected manually. However, finding aproper surrogate loss function may require a considerable amount ofeffort, especially when the evaluation criteria are complicated orinvolve non-convex optimization. Therefore, such approaches requireconsiderable customization and do not provide a general methodology totask-based learning.

In an embodiment, instead of manually designing a hand-crafteddifferentiable loss, the disclosed system and/or method learn adifferentiable surrogate loss function

_(ω) ^(S)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c) via a neural network parameterized by ω,to approximate the true task-based loss and guide the prediction model.Specifically, the system and/or method may formulate the task-basedlearning problem as a bilevel optimization, i.e.,

$\begin{matrix}{\mspace{76mu}{{\min\limits_{\theta}{{\mathbb{E}}_{x \sim {p{(x)}}}\left\lbrack {\ell_{\omega^{*}}^{S}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)},{p\left( {y❘x} \right)},c} \right)} \right\rbrack}}\mspace{76mu}{{subject}\mspace{14mu}{to}\text{:}}}} & (3) \\{{\omega^{*} = {{argmin}_{\omega}{{\mathbb{E}}_{x \sim {p{(x)}}}\left\lbrack {D\left( {{\ell_{\omega}^{S}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)},{p\left( {y❘x} \right)},c} \right)}{}{\ell^{T}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)},{p\left( {y❘x} \right)},c} \right)}} \right)} \right\rbrack}}},{{where}\mspace{14mu}{D\left( {\cdot {} \cdot} \right)}\mspace{14mu}{is}\mspace{14mu} a\mspace{14mu}{discrepancy}\mspace{14mu}{{function}.}}} & (4)\end{matrix}$

In an embodiment, the system and/or method assume that both

_(ω) ^(S)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c) and

^(T)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c) are real-valued loss functions. Thus, thesystem and/or method may consider using absolute error loss or squareerror loss as the discrepancy function, i.e., D(x∥y)=|x−y| orD(x∥y)=(x−y)².

_(x˜p(x))[

^(T)(q _(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c)]≤

_(x˜p(x))[

_(ω) ^(S)(q _(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c)]]+

_(x˜p(x))[|

_(ω) ^(S)(q _(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c)−

^(T)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c)|]  (5)≤

_(x˜p(x))[

_(ω) ^(S)(q _(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c)]]+

_(x˜p(x)) ^(1/2)[

_(ω) ^(S)(q _(θ)(ŷ|x),p(ŷ|x),c)−

^(T)(q _(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c))²]  (6)

(Jensen's Inequality)

As shown in the inequality (5) and (6), if the system and/or method useabsolute/square error loss as the discrepancy function and minimize thediscrepancy term (4) to a small value ε/ε², then the system and/ormethod have

_(x˜p(x))[

^(T)(q _(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c)]≤

_(x˜p(x))[

_(ω) ^(S)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c)]+ε.

Therefore, since the expected true task-based loss is upper bounded bythe expected surrogate loss plus the discrepancy, the system and/ormethod can approximately (with an ε-tolerance) learn the predictionmodel q_(θ)(ŷ|x) w.r.t. the task-based loss via solving the abovebilevel optimization problem.

In an embodiment, the system and/or method can use Lagrangian relaxation(LR) to tackle the above bilevel optimization problem, i.e.,

$\begin{matrix}{{{\min\limits_{\theta,\omega}\mspace{14mu}{{\mathbb{E}}_{x \sim {p{(x)}}}\left\lbrack {\ell_{\omega}^{S}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)},{p\left( {y❘x} \right)},c} \right)} \right\rbrack}} + {{\lambda\mathbb{E}}_{x \sim {p{(x)}}}\left\lbrack {D\left( {{\ell_{\omega}^{S}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)},{p\left( {y❘x} \right)},c} \right)}{}{\ell^{T}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)},{p\left( {y❘x} \right)},c} \right)}} \right)} \right\rbrack}},{{where}\mspace{14mu}\lambda\mspace{14mu}{is}\mspace{14mu} a\mspace{14mu}{non}\text{-}{negative}\mspace{14mu}{weight}\mspace{14mu}{\left( {{{we}\mspace{14mu}{set}\mspace{14mu}\lambda} = 1} \right).}}} & (7)\end{matrix}$

In an aspect, given the fact that

^(T)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c) is non-differentiable, one may not directlyuse gradient-based method to minimize LR (7) w.r.t. both θ and ω.However, though the second term in the LR (7) is non-differentiablew.r.t. θ, it is differentiable w.r.t. ω given the fact that

^(T)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c) does not involve ω and

_(ω) ^(S)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c) is differentiable. Therefore, instead ofminimizing LR (7) directly using all parameters, the system and/ormethod may separate the optimization regarding θ and ω, and onlyminimize the first term in LR (7) w.r.t. θ, i.e.,

$\begin{matrix}{\mspace{76mu}{\min\limits_{\theta}{{\mathbb{E}}_{x \sim {p{(x)}}}\left\lbrack {\ell_{\omega}^{S}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)},{p\left( {y❘x} \right)},c} \right)} \right\rbrack}}} & (8) \\{{\min\limits_{\omega}{{\mathbb{E}}_{x \sim {p{(x)}}}\left\lbrack {\ell_{\omega}^{S}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)},{p\left( {y❘x} \right)},c} \right)} \right\rbrack}} + {{\mathbb{E}}_{x \sim {p{(x)}}}\left\lbrack {D\left( {{\ell_{\omega}^{S}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)},{p\left( {y❘x} \right)},c} \right)}{}{\ell^{T}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {\hat{y}❘x} \right)},{p\left( {y❘x} \right)},c} \right)}} \right)} \right\rbrack}} & (9)\end{matrix}$

In an embodiment, the system and/or method are alternating between (i)optimizing the prediction model q_(θ)(ŷ|x) w.r.t. the current learnedsurrogate loss and (ii) minimizing the gap between the learned surrogateloss and the true task-based loss obtained from the current predictionmodel. In an aspect, the learning of the prediction model and thesurrogate loss depends on each other. Thus, a bad surrogate loss wouldmislead the prediction model and vice versa. For example, if the truetask-based loss is a bounded loss function, then with a bad predictionmodel the learned surrogate loss is likely to get stuck on someinsensitive area, where the loss is saturated due to the huge differencebetween q_(θ)(ŷ|x) and p(y|x). Therefore, instead of starting learningthe prediction model with a randomly initialized surrogate lossfunction, the system and/or method may “warm-up” the prediction modelq_(θ)(ŷ|x) with a designed warm-up loss function

^(W)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),p(y|x),c). Thus, the system and/or method can warm upthe prediction model to be close to the ground truth so that thelearning of the surrogate loss would focus more on the sensitive areaand better boost the task-based performance. In experiments, differentwarm-up losses can be investigated ranging from standard machinelearning losses to heuristic surrogate losses. It can be empiricallyshown that the model would achieve a better performance with the“warm-up” step.

The system and/or method may instantiate the task-based learning processdescribed above via the Task-Oriented Prediction Network (TOPNet). FIG.1 is a diagram illustrating an overview of a Task-Oriented PredictionNetwork in an embodiment. The method can be executed by or run on one ormore processors such as hardware processors, and for example, can beconfigured or provisioned on a computing environment such as acloud-based computing environment. A feature extractor G 102 is firstapplied to extract meaningful features from the raw input data x_(i)101. Then, a predictor network P 104 takes the extracted featureG(x_(i)) 106 to predict the conditional distributionP(G(x_(i)))=q_(θ)(ŷ_(i)|x_(i)) (θ denotes the parameters in P and G)108. In an embodiment, if the system and/or method do not have access tothe true distribution p(y,x), the system and/or method can use theempirical distribution, i.e., a uniform distribution p(y_(i),x_(i)) oversamples in the dataset, to replace p(y,x). Given the fact that theconditional distribution p(y_(i)|x_(i)) is indeed a Dirac Deltadistribution over the value y_(i), for ease of presentation, the systemand/or method can use the point-wise ground truth label y_(i) to replacethe role of p(y_(i)|x_(i)) in the following content. With the predictionq_(θ)(ŷ_(i)|x_(i)), the ground truth label y_(i) and necessarycontextual information c_(i) concerning the task, as shown at 108, thesystem and/or method can invoke the true task-based evaluation criteria110, which potentially involve a decision-making optimization process,to generate the true task-based loss

^(T)(q_(θ)(ŷ_(i)|x_(i)),y_(i),c_(i)) 112.

Meanwhile, a task-oriented loss estimator network T 114 takes thepredictions q_(θ)(ŷ_(i)|x_(i)), the labels y_(i), and the contextualinformation c_(i), as shown at 108, to approximate the true task-basedloss via minimizing the discrepancy 118 between the learned surrogateloss

_(ω) _(T) ^(S)(q_(θ)(ŷ_(i)|x_(i)),y_(i),c_(i)) (ω_(T) denotes theparameters in T) 116 and the true task-based loss 112. The system and/ormethod can update the prediction model using the gradients obtained fromthe learned surrogate loss function. In an embodiment, to facilitate thelearning of both q_(θ)(ŷ|x) and

_(ω) _(T) ^(S)(q_(θ)(ŷ_(i)|x_(i)),y_(i),c_(i)), the system and/or methodmay warm-up the prediction model using a warm-up loss function

^(W)(q_(θ)(ŷ|x),y_(i),c_(i)) 120, which could be either a standardmachine learning loss or a designed heuristic loss, for the firstN_(pre) iterations. For example, the system and/or method may use thesquare error as the loss discrepancy function D(⋅∥⋅) due to its betterempirical performance compared with the absolute error. The systemand/or method may empirically set the hyper-parameterN_(pre)=|D_(train)| to just warm up the prediction model for onetraining epoch.

In an embodiment, the feature extractor G 102 can be a Long Short-TermMemory (LSTM) network. In another embodiment, the feature extractor G102 can be a neural network such as a 3-layer fully-connected neuralnetwork. In an embodiment, the predictor P 104 can be any machinelearning model, for example, a neural network such as a 3-layerfully-connected neural network with a number of hidden units. A neuralnetwork can be implemented with any other number of layers and number ofhidden units. In an embodiment, the task-oriented loss estimator T 114can be a neural network, for example, a 3-layer fully-connected neuralnetwork with hidden units. Any other machine learning models can beimplemented for the feature extractor G 102, predictor P 104 andtask-oriented loss estimator T 114.

Briefly, an artificial neural network (ANN) or neural network (NN) is amachine learning model, which can be trained to predict or classifyinput data. An artificial neural network can include a succession oflayers of neurons, which are interconnected so that output signals ofneurons in one layer are weighted and transmitted to neurons in the nextlayer. A neuron Ni in a given layer may be connected to one or moreneurons Nj in the next layer, and different weights wij can beassociated with each neuron-neuron connection Ni-Nj for weightingsignals transmitted from Ni to Nj. A neuron Nj generates output signalsdependent on its accumulated inputs, and weighted signals can bepropagated over successive layers of the network from an input to anoutput neuron layer. An artificial neural network machine learning modelcan undergo a training phase in which the sets of weights associatedwith respective neuron layers are determined. The network is exposed toa set of training data, in an iterative training scheme in which theweights are repeatedly updated as the network “learns” from the trainingdata. The resulting trained model, with weights defined via the trainingoperation, can be applied to perform a task based on new data. By way ofexample, only, FIG. 1 shows neural network layers of extractor G 102,predictor P 104 and task-oriented loss estimator T 114, as bars.

Algorithm 1 summarizes an implementation of the alternative minimizingprocess in an embodiment of an end-to-end learning process for TOPNet,for example, shown in FIG. 1 .

Algorithm 1: End-to-End learning process for TOPNet Input: x_(i), y_(i)and c_(i) are raw input features, ground-truth label and correspondingcontextual information sampled iid from the training set D_(train).

^(T) (•, •, •) is the true task-based loss function.

^(W) (•, •, •) is the warm-up loss function. D(• ∥ •) is the lossdiscrepancy function. T, P and G denote the task-based loss estimator,the predictor and the feature extractor respectively. N_(train) is thenumber of training iterations. N_(pre) is the number of iterations for“warm-up” pretraining. For ease of presentation, here it is assumed thebatch size is 1. Other batch sizes can be employed.  1: for t ← 1 toN_(train) do  2:  Sample a data point (x_(i), y_(i)) from D_(train).  3: Make prediction q_(θ)(ŷ_(i)|x_(i)) = P (G(x_(i))).  4:  Invoke the truetask-based criteria to compute the true task-  based loss

^(T) (q_(θ)(ŷ_(i)|x_(i)), y_(i), c_(i)).  5:  Approximate the truetask-based loss using the learnable surrogate loss

_(ω) _(T) ^(S)(q_(θ)(ŷ_(i)|x_(i)), y_(i), c_(i)) = T(q_(θ)(ŷ_(i)|x_(i)),y_(i), c_(i)).  6:  Update the task-oriented estimator T via$\min\limits_{\omega_{T}}D{\left( {{\ell_{\omega_{T}}^{S}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {{\overset{\hat{}}{y}}_{i}{❘x_{i}}} \right)},y_{i},c_{i}} \right)}{{\ell^{T}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {{\overset{\hat{}}{y}}_{i}{❘x_{i}}} \right)},y_{i},c_{i}} \right)}}} \right).}$ 7:  if t ≤ N_(pre) then Update the prediction model (P and G) using thewarm-up loss:$\min\limits_{\theta_{G},\theta_{P}}{{\ell^{W}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {{\overset{\hat{}}{y}}_{i}{❘x_{i}}} \right)},y_{i},c_{i}} \right)}.}$ 8:  else Update the prediction model (P and G) using the learnedsurrogate loss:$\min\limits_{\theta_{G},\theta_{P}}{{\ell_{\omega_{T}}^{S}\left( {{q_{\theta}\left( {{\overset{\hat{}}{y}}_{i}{❘x_{i}}} \right)},y_{i},c_{i}} \right)}.}$ 9:  end if 10: end for

TOPNet is a generic learning scheme that can be used in a variety ofapplications with task-based criteria. The following validates itsperformance via datasets from two real-world applications in finance.The experiments compare the benefit of using TOPNet learning scheme overstandard machine learning schemes or hand-crafted heuristic surrogateloss functions.

By way of example, experimental models can be trained with a trainingprocess performed for a number of epochs, for example, 50 epochs, forexample, using a batch size of 1024. An Adam optimizer can be used witha learning rate of 3e-5, and early stopping can be employed toaccelerate the training process and prevent overfitting.

The following describes applying the TOPNet learning scheme in revenuesurprise forecasting example in an embodiment. Revenue growth can be thekey indicator of the valuation and profitability of a company and can beused for investment decisions, such as stock selection and portfoliomanagement. Due to the long tail distribution of revenue growth, theinvestment communities usually predict revenue surprise which is givenby revenue growth minus “consensus”. Here, “consensus” can be theaverage of the estimates of revenue growth published by stock analysts.While revenues are published quarterly, daily forecasts of revenuesurprise enable investors to adjust their portfolio in a granular wayfor return and risk analysis. To predict quarterly revenue surprise atthe daily level before their announcement, information can be collectedincluding quarterly revenue, consensus, stock price and various offinancial indicators of companies during a period, for example, over anumber of years (e.g., 15 years). Each data point can be associated witha 10×12-dimensional feature vector describing up-to-date sequentialhistorical information of the corresponding company. In this exampleexperiment, the label of each data point is a real number describing therevenue surprise of the corresponding company on that specific date. Thewhole dataset can be split chronologically into training set, validationset and test set to validate the performance of models. In anembodiment, a model can be learned for each company. In anotherembodiment, all data points can be used to learn a company-agnosticprediction model. It is possible to build a multi-task learningframework for this specific task.

Task-Based Criteria

In this regression problem, the task-based criterion is the total rewardcalculated based on the Directional Accuracy (DirAcc) and the MagnitudeAccuracy (MagAcc) with respect to the industry benchmark, “consensus”.To be specific,

${DirAcc}_{i} = \left( {{\begin{matrix}{\alpha\mspace{14mu}} & {{{ifsign}\left( {\overset{\sim}{\hat{y}}}_{i} \right)} = {{sign}\left( {\overset{\sim}{y}}_{i} \right)}} \\{- \beta} & {{{ifsign}\left( {\overset{\sim}{\hat{y}}}_{i} \right)} \neq {{sign}\left( {\overset{\sim}{y}}_{i} \right)}}\end{matrix}\mspace{14mu}{MagAcc}_{i}} = \left( \begin{matrix}\gamma & {{{if}{{y_{i} - {\hat{y}}_{i}}}} < {0.5{y_{i}}}} \\0 & {{otherwise}\mspace{95mu}}\end{matrix} \right.} \right.$where {circumflex over ({tilde over (y)})}_(i)=ŷ_(i)−median(y), {tildeover (y)}_(i)=y_(i)−median(y), ŷ_(i)(y_(i)) denotes predicted (true)revenue surprise of a company at a specific date, sign(⋅) denotes thesign function, and median(⋅) represents the median of the predicted(true) revenue surprise of data points of all the companies within thesame quarter as the i-th data point. Here, DirAcc_(i) and MagAcc_(i) areused to denote the Directional Hit/Miss and Magnitude Hit/Miss of datapoint i, and α, β and γ are 3 parameters denoting the reward/penalty ofDirectional Hit, Directional Miss, and Magnitude Hit. In theexperiments, the system and/or method may set α=$5.00, β=$6.11 andγ=$2.22.

The DirAcc measures the percentage of predictions among all thecompanies that are more “directional” accurate than the industrybenchmark, for long/short investment decisions. The DirAcc uses themedian as the anchor to adjust both the prediction and the label inorder to cancel the seasonal trend within a quarter. The MagAccevaluates the percentage of predictions that are significantly (50%)more accurate than the industry benchmark, which is used as an input foroptimizing the weight of stocks in a portfolio. Given DirAcc_(i) andMagAcc_(i), the task-based goal is to maximize the average profit themodel earned from n predictions, i.e.,

${\frac{1}{n}{\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{n}\;{DirAcc}_{i}}} + {{MagAcc}_{i}.}$Since algorithm 1 minimizes the loss function, the system and/or methodmay use the negative of equation as the task-based loss in TOPNets.

Benchmark Methods

(i) Models that are Trained with Standard Machine Learning LossFunction:

In this regression task, the system and/or method may select mean squareerror (MSE) loss and mean absolute error (MAE) loss as candidates ofstandard machine learning loss functions.

(ii) Models that are Trained with Heuristic Surrogate Loss Functions:

Given the task-based criteria, it is observed that a proper heuristicsurrogate loss function could be designed by approximating DirAcc_(i)and MagAcc_(i) using tan h(⋅), i.e.,DirAcc_(i)≈α(1+sign({circumflex over ({tilde over (y)})} _(i) ·{tildeover (y)} _(i)))/2+β(1−sign({circumflex over ({tilde over (y)})} _(i)·{tilde over (y)} _(i)))/2≈α(1+tan h(k·{circumflex over ({tilde over (y)})} _(i) ·{tilde over (y)}_(i)))/2+β(1−tan h(k·{circumflex over ({tilde over (y)})} _(i) ·{tildeover (y)} _(i))/2MagAcc_(i)≈γ(1+sign(0.5|y _(i) |−|y _(i) −ŷ _(i)|)/2)γ(1+tan h(k·(0.5|y _(i) |−|y _(i) −ŷ _(i)|))/2)Here, k is a scale factor and the system and/or method may neglect someboundary situations such as sign({circumflex over ({tilde over(y)})}_(i))=sign({tilde over (y)}_(i))=0 and |y_(i)−ŷ_(i)|=0.5|y_(i)|.An idea of this approximation is to approximate sign(x) with tan h(kx)since lim_(k→+∞)tan h(kx)=sign(x). To saturate the performance of thissurrogate loss function, the system and/or method can explore the bestscale factor k and may find that it achieves the best performance withk=100.

Experimental Setup

By way of example, the system and/or method may use the Long Short-TermMemory (LSTM) networks as the feature extractors and 3-layerfully-connected neural networks as the predictors for all models in theexperiments. For a fair comparison, the system and/or method may explorethe configuration of networks for all models to saturate theirperformance. For LSTMs and 3-layer fully-connected networks, the numberof hidden units can be chosen from [64, 128, 256, 512, 1024]. InTOPNets, in an embodiment, the task-oriented loss estimator T is a3-layer fully-connected neural network with hidden units 1024, 512, 256.

Performance Analysis

By way of example, 15 runs can be performed for all models withdifferent random seed to compute the mean and the standard error oftheir performance. The system and/or method may “warm up” the predictor.In an aspect, the performance of TOPNets was investigated with differentwarm-up losses (denoted as TOPNet_MAE, TOPNet_MSE, TOPNet_Heuristic, andTOPNet_NoWarmUp). It can be shown that TOPNets significantlyoutperformed the standard machine learning models trained with eitherMSE or MAE, boosting the average profit by about 30%. TOPNets alsooutperformed the model trained using the hand-crafted heuristicsurrogate loss function, showing the advantage of using an optimizedlearnable surrogate loss. In the experiments, warming up the predictorsignificantly (14%) boosts the performance compared with the TOPNetwithout a warm-up step (TOPNet_NoWarmUp). It is observed that though themodel trained with the heuristic loss alone achieved a betterperformance than the models trained with MSE or MAE, the heuristic lossmade it harder to further improve the predictor with the learnedsurrogate loss. The same phenomenon can also be found in the next task.

The following described credit risk modeling application as another usecase example. In this example, the main elements of credit risk modelinginclude the estimation of the probability of default and the loss givendefault. In this experimental study, the data includes 1.3 million loanapplications and their payment history. Each loan is associated with an88-dimensional feature vector and a binary label denoting whether theloan application is defaulted or not. The feature vector includesinformation such as the loan status (e.g., current, fully paid, defaultor charged off), the anonymized applicant's information (e.g., asset,debt, and credit scores) and the loan characteristics (e.g., amount,interest rate, various cost factors of default), etc. The whole datasetcan be split randomly into a training set (e.g., 80%), a validation set(e.g., 10%), and a test set (e.g., 10%) to evaluate model performance.

Task-Based Criteria

The credit risk data provides information to compute the profit/loss ofapproving a loan application, i.e.,Profit/Loss=(ReceivedPrinciple+ReceivedInterest−FundedAmount)+(RecoveryAmount−Recoverycost)

Note also that, the recovery happens only if the loan has defaulted andthat if one rejects a loan application, one simply earns $0 from it.Recall in credit risk modeling, the task-based criteria involve theprediction of the default probability p_(i) of the i-th loan applicationas well as the probability decision threshold p_(D) to maximize theprofit after approving all loan applications with a default probabilitylower than p_(D) i.e.,

$\begin{matrix}{{\frac{1}{n}{\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{n}\;{{Profit}\text{/}{{Loss}_{i} \cdot I}\left\{ {p_{i} < p_{D}} \right\}}}} + {{0 \cdot I}\left\{ {p_{i} \geq p_{D}} \right\}}} & (10)\end{matrix}$Here, I{⋅} is used to denote the indicator function.

Benchmark Methods

(i) Models that are Trained with Standard Machine Learning LossFunction:

In this classification task, the experiment selected cross-entropy lossas the standard machine learning loss.

(ii) Models that are Trained with Heuristic Surrogate Loss Functions:

Given the profit/loss of approving a loan application and the predictedprobability of default p_(i), a natural surrogate loss function is,(1−p _(i))·profit/loss+p _(i)·0,which measures the expected profit/loss given p_(i).

Experimental Setup

In this experimental setup, the system and/or method can use 3-layerfully-connected neural networks with hidden units 1024, 512, 256 for thefeature extractors G of all models, and the predictors P are linearlayers. In TOPNets, in an embodiment, the task-oriented loss estimator Tis a 3-layer fully-connected neural network with hidden units 1024, 512,256.

In this task, the evaluation criteria may optimize the decisionprobability threshold p_(D) to maximize the average profit via avalidation set. Specifically, it may sort the data points based on thepredicted default probability p_(i) and optimize the threshold p_(D)based on the cumulative sum of the profit/loss of approving loadapplications with p_(i)<p_(D). In an embodiment, TOPNet can requirepoint-wise task-based loss as the feedback from the task-based criteriain the training phase. However, computing the task-based loss involvesmaking decisions (approve/reject), which requires the decisionprobability threshold p_(D) that is supposed to be optimized on thevalidation set. Noting that, the decision probability threshold p_(D) isa relative value that depends on the predicted default probabilityp_(i). Therefore, maintaining the order of predicted probabilities whileshrinking or increasing them together does not affect the ultimateprofit but leads to a different optimal threshold. Conversely, given afixed decision threshold p_(D) (e.g., 0.5), the system and/or method canlearn a predictor that predicts the default probability with respect tothe threshold. Thus, in the learning process of TOPNet, the systemand/or method can use a fixed decision threshold (0.5) to make decisionsand provide task-based losses in Algorithm 1. During the test, thesystem and/or method may apply the same threshold optimization processon the predictions made by TOPNets as other models.

Performance Analysis

In this experiment, 15 runs are performed for all models with differentrandom seed to compute the mean and the standard error of theirperformance. The performance was evaluated of TOPNets that usecross-entropy loss or heuristic loss as the warm-up loss function(denoted as TOPNet_CE and TOPNet_Heuristic). The performance was alsoevaluated of the TOPNet without a warm-up step. It can be shown thatTOPNets significantly outperformed the standard machine learning modelslearned with cross-entropy, boosting the average profit by $165.7.Taking advantage of the optimized learnable surrogate loss function, theTOPNet warmed-up with cross-entropy loss further boosts the profit by$13.5 per loan compared with the model trained using the heuristic lossfunction. Similar to the phenomenon in the previous task, the TOPNetwarmed-up with the heuristic loss function performed slightly worse thanthe TOPNet warmed-up with cross-entropy loss.

Task-Oriented Prediction Network (TOPNet), a generic learning schemeautomatically integrates the true task-based evaluation criteria into anend-to-end learning process via a learnable surrogate loss function.Tested on two real-world financial prediction tasks, experimentsdemonstrate that TOPNet can significantly boost the ultimate task-basedgoal, outperforming both traditional modeling with standard losses andmodeling with heuristic differentiable (relaxed) surrogate losses. Inanother aspect, the system and/or method may further explore integratingtask-based criteria that involve a strong connection among multiple datapoints.

FIG. 2 is illustrates an overview of the Task-Oriented PredictionNetwork (TOPNet) in another embodiment. An end-to-end learning frameworkcan be implemented with the OPTNet. A feature extractor G₁ 202 is firstapplied to extract meaningful features from the raw input data x_(i)201. Then, a predictor network P 204 takes the extracted featureG₁(x_(i)) 206 to make prediction P(G₁(x_(i)))=ŷ_(i) 208. Given theprediction ŷ_(i), the ground truth label y_(i) and contextualinformation c_(i) concerning the task, as shown at 208, a task-basedevaluation criterion 210, which potentially involves a decision-makingoptimization process, provides a task-based loss l_(T)(ŷ_(i),y_(i),c_(i)) 212 measuring the predictive performance on the datapoint x_(i).

A feature extractor G₂ 220 extracts input feature G₂(x_(i)) 222 from theraw input data x_(i) 201. An encoder E 228 encodes the predictionsŷ_(i), labels y_(i), the contextual information c_(i) into an embeddingvector, E(ŷ_(i),y_(i),c_(i)). To automatically integrate the task-basedloss into the end-to-end learning process, the system and/or method inan embodiment implements a task-oriented estimator network T 214, whichtakes both the extracted input feature G₂(x_(i)) 222, the encodingE(ŷ_(i),y_(i),c_(i)) 230 of the predictions ŷ_(i), labels y_(i), thecontextual information c_(i), to approximate the task-based loss 216.

By way of example, in an embodiment, for classification tasks, where thelabel space is

={0, 1, . . . , l} the predictor network P 204 may predict a probabilitydistribution p_(i,0), . . . , p_(i,l) over all possible labels (insteadof a discrete value), given input feature x_(i). Hence, thetask-oriented estimator network T 214 estimates the task-based loss forall possible labels and approximates the real task-based loss with theexpectation of the estimated taskbased losses.

By way of another example, in an embodiment, for regression tasks, wherethe label space

∈

, the predictor network P 204 directly predicts the label ŷ∈

. Then, the task-oriented estimator network T 214 directly estimates thetask-based loss given the current prediction ŷ. With the estimatedtask-based loss, the system and/or method in an embodiment can optimizethe predictor network toward the task-based goal.

TOPNet in an embodiment hybridizes the surrogate loss function and theestimated task-based loss 216 in a way that the predictor 204 switchesbetween the surrogate loss 224 and the estimated task-based loss 216depending on the estimation error 218 of the task-oriented estimator216, bridging the supervision from both the labels 226 and thetask-based criteria 210. In an embodiment, TOPNet utilizes thesupervision from labels to “warm up” a reasonable predictor with thesurrogate loss function, so that the task-oriented estimator only needsto estimate the task-based loss well when the predictor makes reasonablepredictions. This can be much easier than learning a universal estimatorfor arbitrary predictions. Conversely, a well-learned task-orientedestimator would also improve the predictor, which collaboratively formsa virtuous circle for the learning of both the task-oriented estimatornetwork and the predictor network.

In an embodiment, the feature extractors 202 and 220 can be a LongShort-Term Memory (LSTM) network. In another embodiment, the featureextractors 202 and 220 can be a neural network such as a 3-layerfully-connected neural network. An encoder 230 can also be a neuralnetwork such as a 3-layer fully-connected neural network. In anembodiment, the predictor P 204 can be any machine learning model, forexample, a neural network such as a 3-layer fully-connected neuralnetwork with a number of hidden units. A neural network can beimplemented with any other number of layers and number of hidden units.In an embodiment, the task-oriented estimator T 214 can be a neuralnetwork, for example, a 3-layer fully-connected neural network withhidden units. In an embodiment, Any other machine learning models can beimplemented for the feature extractors 202, 220, predictor P 204,encoder 228, and task-oriented estimator T 214.

Algorithm 2 summarizes a pseudocode of an end-to-end learning scheme forTOPNet in another embodiment. In an embodiment, TOPNet integrates asurrogate loss function l_(S)(⋅, ⋅, ⋅) into the learning process, whichcan either be a designed task-specific surrogate loss or a standardmachine learning loss function. In this embodiment, the system and/ormethod may use an estimation error threshold ϵ to switch the learningloss function between the surrogate loss and the estimated task-basedloss, which enables TOPNet to “warm up” both the predictor P and thetask-oriented estimator T using the designed surrogate loss at the earlystage. The choice of the hyperparameter ϵ depends on the scale of thetask-based loss.

Algorithm 2: End-to-End learning process for TOPNet Input: x_(i),y_(i)and c_(i) are raw input features, label and correspondingcontextual information sampled from the training set. l_(S)(•, •, •) isthe designed surrogate loss function or a standard machine learningloss. ϵ is the maximal tolerance of the estimation error of thetask-based loss. For ease of presentation, the algorithm uses the updateof one data point as an example.  1: Make prediction ŷ_(i) =P(G_(i)(x_(i))).  2: Evaluate the prediction ŷ_(i) using task-basedcriteria given the label y_(i) and the contextual information c_(i), andget a task-based loss l_(T)(ŷ_(i), y_(i), c_(i)).  3: Encode theprediction ŷ_(i), the label y_(i), and the contextual information c_(i)into an embedding E(ŷ_(i), y_(i), c_(i)) via Encoder E (•).  4: Encodethe input features x_(i) into G₂(x_(i)) via feature extractor G(•).  5:If (T([G₂(x_(i)); E(ŷ_(i), y_(i), c_(i))]) − l_(T)(ŷ_(i), y_(i),c_(i)))² < ϵ then  6:  Update the predictor P and the feature extractorG₁ by:$\min\limits_{G_{1},P}{T\left( \left\lbrack {{G_{2}\left( x_{i} \right)};{E\left( {{P\left( {G_{1}\left( x_{i} \right)} \right)},y_{i},c_{i}} \right)}} \right\rbrack \right)}$ 7: else  8:  Update the predictor P and the feature extractor G₂ by:$\min\limits_{G_{1},P}{l_{s}\left( {{P\left( {G_{1}\left( x_{i} \right)} \right)},y_{i},c_{i}} \right)}$ 9: end if 10: Update the task-oriented estimator T, the encoder E andthe feature extractor G₂ by:${\min\limits_{T,E,G_{2}}\left( {{T\left( \left\lbrack {{G_{2}\left( x_{i} \right)};{E\left( {{\overset{\hat{}}{y}}_{i},y_{i},c_{i}} \right)}} \right\rbrack \right)} - {1_{T}\left( {{\overset{\hat{}}{y}}_{i},y_{i},c_{i}} \right)}} \right)}^{2}$Here, the algorithm uses the formulation of regression tasks as anexample. Similar formulation for classification tasks can be derived.

A method of a learning framework, for example, according to Algorithm 2and FIG. 2 , in an aspect, may include the following processing.

1. Make the prediction ŷ from the current predictor.

2. Evaluate the reward/loss of the prediction ŷ based on the task-basedcriteria using both labels and necessary contextual information.

3. An encoder encodes the prediction, the labels and the contextualinformation into an embedding vector.

4. A feature extractor extracts a semantic embedding from the inputfeature x.

5. The task-oriented estimator estimates the expected reward/loss giventhe two embeddings of features, predictions, labels and contextualinformation.

6. If the estimated reward/loss is close to the real reward/loss, themethod updates the predictor to improve the estimated reward.

7. Otherwise, the method updates the predictor to improve with respectto a surrogate loss function or a standard machine learning loss.

8. Update the task-oriented estimator to minimize the difference betweenthe estimated reward/loss and the real reward/loss.

A general end-to-end learning framework can automatically integratetask-oriented evaluation criteria, which are usually not aligned withstandard learning metrics and non-differentiable, into the learningprocess via a task-oriented estimator, and directly learn a model thatdirectly optimizes the ultimate task-based goal/profit.

In another aspect, a system such as a cloud-based system can be providedto deploy the learning framework in a given domain such as, but notlimited to, a financial service domain. Such a learning framework canprovide a tool for financial forecasting, credit risk modeling, and/oranother financial service. For instance, as non-limiting examples, afinancial forecasting tool, utilizing the learning framework, canforecast company revenue surprise, for example, by period such asquarterly forecast, calculate income based on forecast performance withrespect to the given performance metrics, and determine loan accept orreject decisions with respect to the expected profit. FIG. 3 is adiagram illustrating an overview of task oriented learning frameworkdeployed on a cloud-based environment in an embodiment. A task-orientedlearning framework 304 may implement one or more embodiments of amethodology described above with respect to TOPNet. The framework 304may reside in one or more private cloud, hybrid cloud and/or publiccloud. The cloud-based framework 304 may allow for data management andmodel management for machine learning models, which can capturetask-oriented objectives as loss functions in the machine learningmodels. Data management operations can include preparing data for modeltraining and prediction, managing results repository. Model managementcan include creating, updating, deleting and deploying one or moremachine learning models, for example, trained according to the TOPNetmethodology described above, which captures task-oriented objectives,for example, based on task-oriented criterion or criteria, as lossfunctions of machine learning models. Users 306 such as a datascientist, software engineer, or another user can be given access to thecloud-based task-oriented learning framework 304 to perform such datamanagement and model management. For example, a data scientist mayprepare training data, train or build neural network or other machinelearning models, evaluate the built models and save them for use by oneor more end users. As another example, a software engineer may preparescoring data, scripts and deploy a model, for example, for one or moreend users. One or more end users 302 may run one or more model, forexample, built and saved on the framework 304, for one or more ofprediction and classification pertaining to their domain. For instance,a model can be run by a financial analyst to predict next quarterrevenue for a company or a number of companies. As another example, acommodity investor may run a model to predict next season's crop yieldfor one or more farms. A user interface software or tool can providecomponents to observe and analyze results in a form including but notlimited to graphical user interfaces. A graphical user interface, forexample, can present visualization of the resulting model runs orpredictions. A user, for example, can log on to a cloud-based computingenvironment and access the graphical user interface, to run a predictionmodel and visualize analysis results.

FIG. 4 is another diagram illustrating a system architecture in anembodiment. The components shown include computer-implementedcomponents, for instance, implemented and/or run on one or more hardwareprocessors, or coupled with one or more hardware processors. One or morehardware processors, for example, may include components such asprogrammable logic devices, microcontrollers, memory devices, and/orother hardware components, which may be configured to perform respectivetasks described in the present disclosure. Coupled memory devices may beconfigured to selectively store instructions executable by one or morehardware processors.

A processor may be a central processing unit (CPU), a graphicsprocessing unit (GPU), a field programmable gate array (FPGA), anapplication specific integrated circuit (ASIC), another suitableprocessing component or device, or one or more combinations thereof. Theprocessor may be coupled with a memory device. The memory device mayinclude random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM) or anothermemory device, and may store data and/or processor instructions forimplementing various functionalities associated with the methods and/orsystems described herein. The processor may execute computerinstructions stored in the memory or received from another computerdevice or medium.

Data or ETL (extract, transform and load) microservices 404 may processvarious data 402, for example, synthesize or prepare raw data formachine learning. Such data, for example, can be transformed into inputtensor 406, for example, multi-dimensional array or feature vectors orfeature data. Input tensor 406 can be used by one or more modelmanagement microservices 408, which may create, build and/or train oneor more machine learning or neural network models 412. Such models 412may include forecasting models or other models. Prediction microservices410 may use input tensor 406, for example, as test data, to makepredictions by running one or more trained models. Results ofpredictions can be stored in a result repository, for example, on acloud-based system 416. A user interface or a graphical user interface(GUI) tool can be provided, which can visualize in various manner, theresults of the prediction, for example, graphically. Examplevisualization is shown at 414. Microservices 404, 408, 410 can beprovided on a cloud-based computing environment, which a user canaccess.

A configurable tool which can utilize task-oriented learning scheme fortraining a machine learning model such as a neural network, for example,on a cloud-based system, can be provided. The task-oriented learningscheme automatically integrates the ultimate performance/reward metricsinto model learning process. The task-oriented learning scheme designsheuristic reward loss functions for the customized performance metrics,builds an encoder network to encode the predictions, labels and thereward related contextual information into latent embeddings and appliesbatchwise attention mechanism to capture the correlation amongpredictions, which can improve the estimation of overall performance,e.g., ranking, relative direction, etc. A reward estimator network canbe built to estimate the expected reward given input features and thelatent embeddings. The task-oriented learning scheme can optimizes thepredictor network based on both the heuristic reward loss and theapproximated reward from the reward estimator network, and optimize boththe encoder network and the reward estimator network to betterapproximate the real reward.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram illustrating a method in an embodiment. Themethod can be executed on or by one or more processors such as one ormore hardware processors. One or more hardware processors can beprocessors provided on a cloud-based computing environment. The methodcan be configured to build a neural network predictor, or anothermachine learning model, for providing predictions for a given domain,for example, configured by one or more users. At 502, the method mayinclude receiving training data. At 504, the method can includereceiving contextual information associated with a task-based criterion.At 506, the method can include training a machine learning model usingthe training data. In an aspect, a loss function computed during thetraining integrates the task-based criterion, and minimizing the lossfunction during training iterations includes minimizing the task-basedcriterion. In an embodiment, the machine learning model includes aneural network. As described above, the method can also include learninga surrogate loss function that is differentiable, to guide the machinelearning model. The machine learning model can be updated usinggradients obtained from the learned surrogate loss function. In anembodiment, the surrogate loss function can be learned via a neuralnetwork parameterized by a weight. In an embodiment, the surrogate lossfunction is initialized with a warm-up loss function. The method canfurther include approximating a true task-based loss by minimizing adiscrepancy between a surrogate loss from the learned surrogate lossfunction and the true task-based loss. In an embodiment, approximating atrue task-based loss can be performed by a neural network. The methodcan also include providing a framework for building, maintaining andrunning the machine learning model, for example, on a cloud-basedsystem, which includes sharable resources. The method can also includeextracting by a long short-term memory (LSTM) network features from thetraining data, wherein the machine learning model is trained based onthe features.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing components of a system in one embodimentthat can provide a task-based learning and task-directed predictionnetwork. One or more hardware processors 602 such as a centralprocessing unit (CPU), a graphic process unit (GPU), and/or a FieldProgrammable Gate Array (FPGA), an application specific integratedcircuit (ASIC), and/or another processor, may be coupled with a memorydevice 604, and generate a task-based prediction model. A memory device604 may include random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM) oranother memory device, and may store data and/or processor instructionsfor implementing various functionalities associated with the methodsand/or systems described herein. One or more processors 602 may executecomputer instructions stored in memory 604 or received from anothercomputer device or medium. A memory device 604 may, for example, storeinstructions and/or data for functioning of one or more hardwareprocessors 602, and may include an operating system and other program ofinstructions and/or data. One or more hardware processors 602 mayreceive training data, receive contextual information associated with atask-based criterion, and train a machine learning model using thetraining data, wherein a loss function computed during training of themachine learning model integrates the task-based criterion, and whereinminimizing the loss function during training iterations includesminimizing the task-based criterion. In an aspect, received data may bestored in a storage device 606 or received via a network interface 608from a remote device, and may be temporarily loaded into a memory device604 for building or generating the prediction model. The learnedprediction model may be stored on a memory device 604, for example, forexecution by one or more hardware processors 602. One or more hardwareprocessors 602 may be coupled with interface devices such as a networkinterface 608 for communicating with remote systems, for example, via anetwork, and an input/output interface 610 for communicating with inputand/or output devices such as a keyboard, mouse, display, and/or others.

FIG. 7 illustrates a schematic of an example computer or processingsystem that may implement a system in an embodiment. The computer systemis only one example of a suitable processing system and is not intendedto suggest any limitation as to the scope of use or functionality ofembodiments of the methodology described herein. The processing systemshown may be operational with numerous other general purpose or specialpurpose computing system environments or configurations. Examples ofwell-known computing systems, environments, and/or configurations thatmay be suitable for use with the processing system shown in FIG. 7 mayinclude, but are not limited to, personal computer systems, servercomputer systems, thin clients, thick clients, handheld or laptopdevices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based systems, set topboxes, programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputersystems, mainframe computer systems, and distributed cloud computingenvironments that include any of the above systems or devices, and thelike.

The computer system may be described in the general context of computersystem executable instructions, such as program modules, being executedby a computer system. Generally, program modules may include routines,programs, objects, components, logic, data structures, and so on thatperform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types.The computer system may be practiced in distributed cloud computingenvironments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices thatare linked through a communications network. In a distributed cloudcomputing environment, program modules may be located in both local andremote computer system storage media including memory storage devices.

The components of computer system may include, but are not limited to,one or more processors or processing units 12, a system memory 16, and abus 14 that couples various system components including system memory 16to processor 12. The processor 12 may include a module 30 that performsthe methods described herein. The module 30 may be programmed into theintegrated circuits of the processor 12, or loaded from memory 16,storage device 18, or network 24 or combinations thereof.

Bus 14 may represent one or more of any of several types of busstructures, including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheralbus, an accelerated graphics port, and a processor or local bus usingany of a variety of bus architectures. By way of example, and notlimitation, such architectures include Industry Standard Architecture(ISA) bus, Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) bus, Enhanced ISA (EISA)bus, Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) local bus, andPeripheral Component Interconnects (PCI) bus.

Computer system may include a variety of computer system readable media.Such media may be any available media that is accessible by computersystem, and it may include both volatile and non-volatile media,removable and non-removable media.

System memory 16 can include computer system readable media in the formof volatile memory, such as random access memory (RAM) and/or cachememory or others. Computer system may further include otherremovable/non-removable, volatile/non-volatile computer system storagemedia. By way of example only, storage system 18 can be provided forreading from and writing to a non-removable, non-volatile magnetic media(e.g., a “hard drive”). Although not shown, a magnetic disk drive forreading from and writing to a removable, non-volatile magnetic disk(e.g., a “floppy disk”), and an optical disk drive for reading from orwriting to a removable, non-volatile optical disk such as a CD-ROM,DVD-ROM or other optical media can be provided. In such instances, eachcan be connected to bus 14 by one or more data media interfaces.

Computer system may also communicate with one or more external devices26 such as a keyboard, a pointing device, a display 28, etc.; one ormore devices that enable a user to interact with computer system; and/orany devices (e.g., network card, modem, etc.) that enable computersystem to communicate with one or more other computing devices. Suchcommunication can occur via Input/Output (I/O) interfaces 20.

Still yet, computer system can communicate with one or more networks 24such as a local area network (LAN), a general wide area network (WAN),and/or a public network (e.g., the Internet) via network adapter 22. Asdepicted, network adapter 22 communicates with the other components ofcomputer system via bus 14. It should be understood that although notshown, other hardware and/or software components could be used inconjunction with computer system. Examples include, but are not limitedto: microcode, device drivers, redundant processing units, external diskdrive arrays, RAID systems, tape drives, and data archival storagesystems, etc.

It is understood in advance that although this disclosure may include adescription on cloud computing, implementation of the teachings recitedherein are not limited to a cloud computing environment. Rather,embodiments of the present invention are capable of being implemented inconjunction with any other type of computing environment now known orlater developed. Cloud computing is a model of service delivery forenabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool ofconfigurable computing resources (e.g. networks, network bandwidth,servers, processing, memory, storage, applications, virtual machines,and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimalmanagement effort or interaction with a provider of the service. Thiscloud model may include at least five characteristics, at least threeservice models, and at least four deployment models.

Characteristics are as follows:

On-demand self-service: a cloud consumer can unilaterally provisioncomputing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, asneeded automatically without requiring human interaction with theservice's provider.

Broad network access: capabilities are available over a network andaccessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneousthin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Resource pooling: the provider's computing resources are pooled to servemultiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physicaland virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according todemand. There is a sense of location independence in that the consumergenerally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of theprovided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher levelof abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter).

Rapid elasticity: capabilities can be rapidly and elasticallyprovisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out andrapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilitiesavailable for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can bepurchased in any quantity at any time.

Measured service: cloud systems automatically control and optimizeresource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level ofabstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage,processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can bemonitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both theprovider and consumer of the utilized service.

Service Models are as follows:

Software as a Service (SaaS): the capability provided to the consumer isto use the provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure.The applications are accessible from various client devices through athin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based e-mail).The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloudinfrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage,or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exceptionof limited user-specific application configuration settings.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): the capability provided to the consumer isto deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquiredapplications created using programming languages and tools supported bythe provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlyingcloud infrastructure including networks, servers, operating systems, orstorage, but has control over the deployed applications and possiblyapplication hosting environment configurations.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): the capability provided to theconsumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and otherfundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy andrun arbitrary software, which can include operating systems andapplications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlyingcloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage,deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networkingcomponents (e.g., host firewalls).

Deployment Models are as follows:

Private cloud: the cloud infrastructure is operated solely for anorganization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party andmay exist on-premises or off-premises.

Community cloud: the cloud infrastructure is shared by severalorganizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns(e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and complianceconsiderations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third partyand may exist on-premises or off-premises.

Public cloud: the cloud infrastructure is made available to the generalpublic or a large industry group and is owned by an organization sellingcloud services.

Hybrid cloud: the cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or moreclouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities butare bound together by standardized or proprietary technology thatenables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting forload-balancing between clouds).

A cloud computing environment is service oriented with a focus onstatelessness, low coupling, modularity, and semantic interoperability.At the heart of cloud computing is an infrastructure that includes anetwork of interconnected nodes.

Referring now to FIG. 8 , illustrative cloud computing environment 50 isdepicted. As shown, cloud computing environment 50 includes one or morecloud computing nodes 10 with which local computing devices used bycloud consumers, such as, for example, personal digital assistant (PDA)or cellular telephone 54A, desktop computer 54B, laptop computer 54C,and/or automobile computer system 54N may communicate. Nodes 10 maycommunicate with one another. They may be grouped (not shown) physicallyor virtually, in one or more networks, such as Private, Community,Public, or Hybrid clouds as described hereinabove, or a combinationthereof. This allows cloud computing environment 50 to offerinfrastructure, platforms and/or software as services for which a cloudconsumer does not need to maintain resources on a local computingdevice. It is understood that the types of computing devices 54A-N shownin FIG. 8 are intended to be illustrative only and that computing nodes10 and cloud computing environment 50 can communicate with any type ofcomputerized device over any type of network and/or network addressableconnection (e.g., using a web browser).

Referring now to FIG. 9 , a set of functional abstraction layersprovided by cloud computing environment 50 (FIG. 8 ) is shown. It shouldbe understood in advance that the components, layers, and functionsshown in FIG. 9 are intended to be illustrative only and embodiments ofthe invention are not limited thereto. As depicted, the following layersand corresponding functions are provided:

Hardware and software layer 60 includes hardware and softwarecomponents. Examples of hardware components include: mainframes 61; RISC(Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture based servers 62;servers 63; blade servers 64; storage devices 65; and networks andnetworking components 66. In some embodiments, software componentsinclude network application server software 67 and database software 68.

Virtualization layer 70 provides an abstraction layer from which thefollowing examples of virtual entities may be provided: virtual servers71; virtual storage 72; virtual networks 73, including virtual privatenetworks; virtual applications and operating systems 74; and virtualclients 75.

In one example, management layer 80 may provide the functions describedbelow. Resource provisioning 81 provides dynamic procurement ofcomputing resources and other resources that are utilized to performtasks within the cloud computing environment. Metering and Pricing 82provide cost tracking as resources are utilized within the cloudcomputing environment, and billing or invoicing for consumption of theseresources. In one example, these resources may include applicationsoftware licenses. Security provides identity verification for cloudconsumers and tasks, as well as protection for data and other resources.User portal 83 provides access to the cloud computing environment forconsumers and system administrators. Service level management 84provides cloud computing resource allocation and management such thatrequired service levels are met. Service Level Agreement (SLA) planningand fulfillment 85 provide pre-arrangement for, and procurement of,cloud computing resources for which a future requirement is anticipatedin accordance with an SLA.

Workloads layer 90 provides examples of functionality for which thecloud computing environment may be utilized. Examples of workloads andfunctions which may be provided from this layer include: mapping andnavigation 91; software development and lifecycle management 92; virtualclassroom education delivery 93; data analytics processing 94;transaction processing 95; and task-based learning and task-directedprediction network processing 96.

The present invention may be a system, a method, and/or a computerprogram product at any possible technical detail level of integration.The computer program product may include a computer readable storagemedium (or media) having computer readable program instructions thereonfor causing a processor to carry out aspects of the present invention.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that canretain and store instructions for use by an instruction executiondevice. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but isnot limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device,an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, asemiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of thecomputer readable storage medium includes the following: a portablecomputer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), aread-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROMor Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portablecompact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD),a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such aspunch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructionsrecorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Acomputer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construedas being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freelypropagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagatingthrough a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulsespassing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmittedthrough a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can bedownloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computerreadable storage medium or to an external computer or external storagedevice via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, awide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprisecopper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wirelesstransmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/oredge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in eachcomputing/processing device receives computer readable programinstructions from the network and forwards the computer readable programinstructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium withinthe respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations ofthe present invention may be assembler instructions,instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions,machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions,state-setting data, configuration data for integrated circuitry, oreither source code or object code written in any combination of one ormore programming languages, including an object oriented programminglanguage such as Smalltalk, C++, or the like, and procedural programminglanguages, such as the “C” programming language or similar programminglanguages. The computer readable program instructions may executeentirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as astand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partlyon a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. Inthe latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user'scomputer through any type of network, including a local area network(LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to anexternal computer (for example, through the Internet using an InternetService Provider). In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including,for example, programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gatearrays (FPGA), or programmable logic arrays (PLA) may execute thecomputer readable program instructions by utilizing state information ofthe computer readable program instructions to personalize the electroniccircuitry, in order to perform aspects of the present invention.

Aspects of the present invention are described herein with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems), and computer program products according to embodiments of theinvention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented bycomputer readable program instructions.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to aprocessor of a computer, or other programmable data processing apparatusto produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via theprocessor of the computer or other programmable data processingapparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified inthe flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks. These computerreadable program instructions may also be stored in a computer readablestorage medium that can direct a computer, a programmable dataprocessing apparatus, and/or other devices to function in a particularmanner, such that the computer readable storage medium havinginstructions stored therein comprises an article of manufactureincluding instructions which implement aspects of the function/actspecified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto acomputer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other deviceto cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer,other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computerimplemented process, such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement thefunctions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block orblocks.

The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate thearchitecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementationsof systems, methods, and computer program products according to variousembodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in theflowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portionof instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions forimplementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the blocks may occur out of theorder noted in the Figures. For example, two blocks shown in successionmay, in fact, be accomplished as one step, executed concurrently,substantially concurrently, in a partially or wholly temporallyoverlapping manner, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in thereverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will alsobe noted that each block of the block diagrams and/or flowchartillustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and/orflowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purposehardware-based systems that perform the specified functions or acts orcarry out combinations of special purpose hardware and computerinstructions.

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particularembodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the invention. Asused herein, the singular forms “a”, “an” and “the” are intended toinclude the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicatesotherwise. As used herein, the term “or” is an inclusive operator andcan mean “and/or”, unless the context explicitly or clearly indicatesotherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprise”,“comprises”, “comprising”, “include”, “includes”, “including”, and/or“having,” when used herein, can specify the presence of stated features,integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do notpreclude the presence or addition of one or more other features,integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groupsthereof. As used herein, the phrase “in an embodiment” does notnecessarily refer to the same embodiment, although it may. As usedherein, the phrase “in one embodiment” does not necessarily refer to thesame embodiment, although it may. As used herein, the phrase “in anotherembodiment” does not necessarily refer to a different embodiment,although it may. Further, embodiments and/or components of embodimentscan be freely combined with each other unless they are mutuallyexclusive.

The corresponding structures, materials, acts, and equivalents of allmeans or step plus function elements, if any, in the claims below areintended to include any structure, material, or act for performing thefunction in combination with other claimed elements as specificallyclaimed. The description of the present invention has been presented forpurposes of illustration and description, but is not intended to beexhaustive or limited to the invention in the form disclosed. Manymodifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skillin the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.The embodiment was chosen and described in order to best explain theprinciples of the invention and the practical application, and to enableothers of ordinary skill in the art to understand the invention forvarious embodiments with various modifications as are suited to theparticular use contemplated.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:receiving training data; receiving contextual information associatedwith a task-based criterion; and training a machine learning model usingthe training data, wherein a loss function computed during the trainingintegrates the task-based criterion, and wherein minimizing the lossfunction during training iterations includes minimizing the task-basedcriterion, the minimizing the task-based criterion including at leastgenerating true task-based loss using predictions of the machinelearning model, ground truth labels associated with the predictions ofthe machine learning model, and the contextual information, training atask-oriented loss estimator network that takes encodings of at leastthe predictions of the machine learning model, the ground truth labelsassociated with the predictions of the machine learning model, thecontextual information, and that minimize a discrepancy between learnedloss of the task-oriented loss estimator network and the true task-basedloss, wherein the training the machine learning model includes,responsive to determining that the discrepancy is less than a thresholdvalue, updating parameters of the machine learning model based on thelearned loss of the task-oriented loss estimator network, and responsiveto determining that the discrepancy is not less than the thresholdvalue, updating parameters of the machine learning model based onstandard loss of the machine learning model.
 2. The method of claim 1,further including providing a tool for building and managing the machineleaning model on a computing environment, the computing environmentallowing an on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurablecomputing resources, the configurable computing resources including atleast one of networks, network bandwidth, servers, processing, memory,storage, applications, virtual machines, and services.
 3. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the machine learning model includes a neural network.4. The method of claim 1, further including learning a surrogate lossfunction that is differentiable, to guide the machine learning model. 5.The method of claim 4, wherein the machine learning model is updatedusing gradients obtained from the learned surrogate loss function. 6.The method of claim 4, wherein the surrogate loss function is learnedvia a neural network parameterized by a weight.
 7. The method of claim4, wherein the surrogate loss function is initialized with a warm-uploss function.
 8. The method of claim 4, further including approximatinga true task-based loss by minimizing a discrepancy between a surrogateloss from the learned surrogate loss function and the true task-basedloss.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the approximating is performedby a neural network.
 10. The method of claim 1, further includingextracting by a long short-term memory (LSTM) network features from thetraining data, wherein the machine learning model is trained based onthe features.
 11. A system comprising: a hardware processor; and amemory device coupled with the hardware processor, the hardwareprocessor configured to: receive training data; receive contextualinformation associated with a task-based criterion; and train a machinelearning model using the training data, wherein a loss function computedduring training of the machine learning model integrates the task-basedcriterion, and wherein minimizing the loss function during trainingiterations includes minimizing the task-based criterion, the minimizingthe task-based criterion including at least generating true task-basedloss using predictions of the machine learning model, ground truthlabels associated with the predictions of the machine learning model,and the contextual information, training a task-oriented loss estimatornetwork that takes encodings of at least the predictions of the machinelearning model, the ground truth labels associated with the predictionsof the machine learning model, the contextual information, and thatminimize a discrepancy between learned loss of the task-oriented lossestimator network and the true task-based loss, wherein the hardwareprocessor is configured to train the machine learning model at least by,responsive to determining that the discrepancy is less than a thresholdvalue, updating parameters of the machine learning model based on thelearned loss of the task-oriented loss estimator network, and responsiveto determining that the discrepancy is not less than the thresholdvalue, updating parameters of the machine learning model based onstandard loss of the machine learning model.
 12. The system of claim 11,wherein the machine learning model includes a neural network.
 13. Thesystem of claim 11, wherein the hardware processor is further configuredto learn a surrogate loss function that is differentiable, to guide themachine learning model.
 14. The system of claim 13, wherein the hardwareprocessor is further configured to update the machine learning modelusing gradients obtained from the learned surrogate loss function. 15.The system of claim 13, wherein the hardware processor is furtherconfigured to learn the surrogate loss function via a neural networkparameterized by a weight.
 16. The system of claim 13, wherein thehardware processor is further configured to initialize the surrogateloss function with a warm-up loss function.
 17. The system of claim 13,wherein the hardware processor is further configured to approximate atrue task-based loss by minimizing a discrepancy between a surrogateloss from the learned surrogate loss function and the true task-basedloss.
 18. The system of claim 17 wherein a neural network performs theminimizing a discrepancy between a surrogate loss from the learnedsurrogate loss function and the true task-based loss to approximate thetrue task-based loss.
 19. A computer program product comprising acomputer readable storage medium having program instructions embodiedtherewith, the program instructions readable by a device to cause thedevice to: receive training data; receive contextual informationassociated with a task-based criterion; and train a machine learningmodel using the training data, wherein a loss function computed duringtraining of the machine learning model integrates the task-basedcriterion, and wherein minimizing the loss function during trainingiterations includes minimizing the task-based criterion, the minimizingthe task-based criterion including at least generating true task-basedloss using predictions of the machine learning model, ground truthlabels associated with the predictions of the machine learning model,and the contextual information, training a task-oriented loss estimatornetwork that takes encodings of at least the predictions of the machinelearning model, the ground truth labels associated with the predictionsof the machine learning model, the contextual information, and thatminimize a discrepancy between learned loss of the task-oriented lossestimator network and the true task-based loss, wherein the device iscaused to train the machine learning model at least by, responsive todetermining that the discrepancy is less than a threshold value,updating parameters of the machine learning model based on the learnedloss of the task-oriented loss estimator network, and responsive todetermining that the discrepancy is not less than the threshold value,updating parameters of the machine learning model based on standard lossof the machine learning model.
 20. The computer program product of claim19, wherein the machine learning model includes a neural network.